Tokyo woman who thought Chinese sperm donor was Japanese sues for US$2.9 million
- Married woman had sex with donor on 10 occasions after finding him on social media. She says he falsely claimed to be a single graduate of an elite university
- The case has raised the lid on ageing Japan’s fraught attempts to regulate the sector
The woman, whose name is being withheld under court privacy rules, is understood to be married and in her 30s. She had one child with her husband before he was diagnosed with a serious hereditary illness that prevented the couple from having more children.
Desperate for a second child, the woman took to social media in search of a sperm donor. She eventually connected with a man from northern Japan who claimed to be single, Japanese and a graduate of the elite Kyoto University. According to the Tokyo Shimbun, the woman had sex with the man on 10 occasions and she ultimately became pregnant in June 2019.
She later discovered, however, that the sperm donor was a Chinese national married to a Japanese woman and had graduated from a university in a rural part of northern Japan. By then, it was too late to terminate the pregnancy. After she gave birth, she immediately put the baby up for adoption.
The woman has filed a compensation suit demanding 330 million yen (US$2.9 million) for emotional distress, although her lawyer told a press conference last week that her primary motivation was for the case to “lead to a fuller debate of the sperm donation business in Japan”.